LeftLibertarian Rants

These are the rants of an anonymous Left-leaning Libertarian. Libertarian views are generally socially liberal but fiscally conservative. I view George Bush as the anti-Libertarian, he is socially conservative and fiscally irresponsible. Unless you are a very wealthy person, religious fundamentalist, or a racist redneck, I cannot understand why a person would support George Bush.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

The Amazing rationalization abilities of the right-wing

The American right-wing has a huge ability to rationalize things. They are able to see things the way they want to see things and not how they really are. And when Americans joined in that irrational exuberance, they were able run wild with their foolish policies. But willful-delusions have a nasty time when they run up against reality. And that is what we have been seeing in the last year or two.

Anyway, I just want to list a number of amazingly pathetic right-wing rationalizations. Some have smacked into reality lately. Others have not fully faced their reckoning yet. But the most scary thing is that many people continue to believe discredited right-wing fantasys. And even the people that will admit the fantasys that have been de-bunked continue to believe in the other fantasys despite the fact they are pushed by the same ideological losers.

Right-wing fantasy: Iraq has WMDs. Saddam is an evil dictator and they wanted to believe that he had WMDs. So they sought out and believed every shred of evidence that supported that conclusion (no matter how little credibility such evidence had).Reality meeting: Yes, the Iraq Survey Group debunked this fantasy.Right wingers continue to believe: The ISG proof doesn't stop plenty of right-wingers from believing that we found WMDs. Others insist on conspiracy theories like they were shipped to Syria.

Right-wing fantasy: Iraq had substantive ties with Al-Qeada. They wanted to believe Saddam & Iraq had ties to the people the committed 9/11 . . . so they sought out and believed every shred of evidence that supported that conclusion (no matter how little credibility such evidence had). Dick Cheney was one of the worst proponents of this fictionReality meeting: The Senate Intelligence committee released a report that de-bunked all of this crap.Right wingers continue to believe: Even after the FBI debunked the Mohammad Atta & Iraq connection in Prague, Dick Cheney kept pushing that bit of fiction. Most right-wingers are completely ignorant of that Senate Intelligence report. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH (for right-wingers)

Right-wing fantasy: "We will be greeted as liberators".Reality meeting: This war has continued for four years now and US soldiers continue to die.Right wingers continue to believe: Many continue to believe. Others resort to re-writing history and saying that they never claimed such things.

Right-wing fantasy: Tax cuts are the cure-all for the economy and raise revenues.Reality: Reagan cut taxes & ran up massive deficits. A Clinton tax hike wiped out the deficits and did not cause a recession as predicted. Bush cut taxes and has run up even more massive deficits. We currently have permanent structural deficits despite the constantly repeated right-wing fiction of 'cutting taxes raises revenues'. Well, if revenues have gone up so much, we surely don't have any deficits then, right? WRONG.Right-wingers continue to believe: Most of them continue to believe this crap. Occasionally, some of them will face reality as Paul O'Neill did (and was then summarily pushed out of the Bush administration.)

Right-wing fantasy: Global Warming is some left-wing conspiracyReality meeting: Only slight. Although just about every reputable scientist has come to the conclusion that climate change is happening and humans are causing it, it is difficult to prove this completely. As a result, I believe that it will take a 1 foot rise in sea levels before right wingers believe.

Many people will believe what they want to believe . . . and to those people, facts are nothing but 'the opinion of the liberal media'.

And now, time for me to offend some people . . . what is at the heart of this phenomenon? Psychology. IMHO, the brain constructed with weird quirks that drive us toward such irrational and illogical conclusions. Why? Well, as conscious beings we are all fully aware that we will all die eventually. Absolutely nothing will stop that reality. And that depressing final disposition could paralyze us if we really thought about it too much. So we don't. We create elaborate rationalizations, delusions, and fictions about death. The most common delusion is that we won't really die . . . we will continue to live in an 'after-life'. It is a great delusion since it turns an awful thing (death) into a good thing (a whole new life). Just about every human civilization has independently come up with their own variant of this delusion. Whether it is going to heaven with Jesus, going to heaven with Mohammad, being reincarnated, or being transported to some spaceship as those Heaven's Gate people believed, most religions promise an after-life. It is something that our brains are hard-wired to believe. So, it should come to no surprise that the right-wing that is very prone to religious delusions is very good at coming up with other rationalizations and delusions.

Another disastrous Bush Interview

I listed to an interview of Bush on the McNeil News hour today. It was very depressing. Bush was a bumbling stuttering fool who just spewed forth the same old stale policies that have failed the country for the last six years. Part of me actually starts to feel sorry for the guy. And then I realize that is just my pathetic 'bleeding-heart liberal' side. There is no reason to feel sorry for Bush. He is a arrogant wealthy jerk. And here he sees that his policies are failing and he's been given a set of alternate policies by family confidant James Baker. But in his trademarke arrogant stubborness, he has discarded that advice and continue pushing his failed policies in a vain attempt to salvage his legacy.

With nothing but fake sympathy, Bush sends more troops to their deaths. When asked about whether the rest of the country should share in the sacrifice for the war, he immediately begins the standard refrain . . . "Raise taxes?" Bush and other Republicans are masters of denial and rationalization when it comes to taxes. They have convinced themselves that raising their own taxes is always bad for the country. Really? You mean having to buy a Lincoln instead of a BMW 7 series is bad for the country? Are we really helping the country by living with an unsustainable standard of living and pushing all the costs of the war onto our children and grandchildren? Of course not.

I'm struggling to find a silver-lining in this big black cloud. The only thing I can see is that Bush's horrendous policies continue to destroy the current corrupt and ideologically bankrupt GOP. It is very sad that this destruction of the GOP has to come at the expense of soldier's lives and excessive government debt. But that is the only good thing I can say about Bush right now.

Ever notice that any time Bush is interviewed, the interviewer ends up looking smarter than Bush? I always sit there and think "Why can't that interviewer be our president?"

Monday, January 15, 2007

A time comes when silence is betrayal

"A time comes when silence is betrayal." That time has come for us in relation to Iraq.The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexing as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty. But we must move on.Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation’s history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements, and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us. Those are not my words, they are Martin Luther King's words. I just replaced 'Vietnam' with 'Iraq'. Happy Martin Luther King Day! Honor him by reading his views on the Vietnam war . . . they have scary parallels to the current struggle in Iraq.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Dick Cheney has NEGATIVE credibility on Iraq

Dick Cheney doesn't have zero credibility on Iraq, he has negative credibility. No one should listen to anything he says . . . and if you do, you should probably do the opposite of what he says.

First of all, he has been wrong on everything. He said he believed that Saddam has "reconstituted nuclear weapons" WTF? Saddam had no nukes and he knew it. Even if we give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant "reconstituted nuclear weapons program", he was still completely wrong. There was no nuclear program in Iraq. The yellowcake ruse was exposed as a fraud. And the aluminum tubes were for missiles as they were told by experts.

Cheney said that the insurgency was "in its last throes". He said that about 2 years ago! He has been completely wrong about that.

And beyond the fact that he has been so wrong is his conflicts of interest. There are people who are paying a great sacrifice for this war. Years away from jobs and their families. Over 3000 have paid the ultimate price. But Cheney never served . . . he got five deferments. No one in his family is serving. His daughter could have served. Well if he is not personally giving to the war effort, is he paying a monetary sum? During most wars, taxes are raise to pay for the war. Nope . . . Cheney has given himself huge tax cuts. Not only is he not paying more, he is actually paying LESS.

But it doesn't stop there . . . no, Dick Cheney is profiting from this war. Well all know how the contractor Halliburton that was once headed by Cheney received the largest government contracts for this war. Many of those contracts were secretly awarded with no bidding. Is that not fraudulent enough? Do you actually believe the rationalizations about how they had to be offered quickly and in secret? Well, add in the fact that these contracts had multi-year terms! There was no reason for such contracts to be given such long terms. They should have been allowed to be re-bid after the urgency was over and things were no longer secret.

Cheney is getting deferred compensation. That not enough of profiting? OK, he owns options that have massively gained in value. He has said that the will give those options to charity . . . well, why didn't he do that right away? BECAUSE HE WANTED THEM TO GO UP IN VALUE BEFORE HE DONATED THEM SO HE'LL GET HUGE TAX BREAKS. He'll be able to use those tax breaks to offset the huge speaking fees and other gratuitous gifts that he'll receive after he leaves office.

So not only has Dick Cheney been wrong on everything he has said about this war, he actually profits from this war. His credibility is less than zero. Doing the opposite of whatever he says is probably the best choice of action.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

The Surge

In a fit of sheer vanity, President Bush has thrown a "Hail Mary" in attempts to salvage the disaster known as the Iraq war. Against the will of American military commanders, the American people, and the Iraqi people; Bush has decided to send additional troops to Iraq in a last ditch attempt to stabilize Iraq. Will it work? Maybe . . . but not likely. Bush simply does not understand Iraq. Iraqis have spent the majority of their lives living in sympathy of their Palestinian Arab brethren living under the occupation of Westerners. And now they find themselves in the same situation. Yet Bush thinks they will quit resisting because a few more occupation troops show up? Bush is just clueless.

Bush mentioned Al-Qeada ten times in his speech. Who does he think he is fooling? The vast majority of the violence is Sunni v. Shiia or Iraqi v. occupier. Al-Qeada is nothing but a bit player . . . . but Bush plays them up since they are the 9/11 boogie-man.

For the sake of the American troops in Iraq, I hope that I am wrong and that Bush is right. But that seems like a long shot. When has he gotten ANYTHING about Iraq right?